Personal musings on religion, philosophy, music and on occasion, beer.

Monday, June 3, 2013

I'll go easy ...sorta ...maybe...

Two years ago I hit a wall. I wanted to delve into my own personal reasons of why I had lost my faith but it went no where. After announcing that I would being doing some introspection I thought to myself how would it sound? What do I include? The whole story or just small snippets of major events? I really couldn't decide on a format. I was pretty much creatively cock blocked by my own mind. Two years later, I realized why I had such a hard time doing so. Context.
If you would have asked me two years ago why I had lost my faith I would have told you the evidence led me to challenge and question my faith and it didn't hold up to scrutiny. But that's a softball answer. BORING! It doesn't really give anything in the matter of information. Why? When? How? What about the evidence was so appealing? How come that certain bit hit so close to home? Why did it change you practically over night? These types of questions I really didn't have "big" answers for. It wasn't until I started conversing with my family--I have a younger sister and mother and father--that I started to realize once again why the evidence was so appealing to me.

I could end the story right here and just say it was because of how much bullshit religion is soaked in. How much rationalizing you have to do just to make sense of the world; to make your religious views comport with reality. It becomes mind numbing. But it also doesn't make for a good story.

When it comes to family things like this, it can become very difficult. While I don't want to disparage my family by making them seem like crazy fundies because they aren't, I also don't want to hold back my criticisms in any way. So it can become a sticky situation. I love my family. They are my best friends. We are very close to each other and also very open. But we are also extremely different in our world views and political leanings. Which makes for fun holidays and family BBQs. So I will try my best to be fair and not too overly harsh in my criticisms. With that said I will also not really hold anything back when it comes to how I faced similar situations and ended up with different conclusions compared to my family because that is what this series, if it can be called that, will be about.